I Want You To Hit Me As Hard as You Can

Good development day yesterday. I finally got the fall down system to work again in the new linear code base, which is nice. It first was doing something stupid with the floor controller, which was dumb. When I got rid of that it made the walls Jell-o. I mean, I would hit an enemy into walls and instead of bouncing like good little physics objects they would slow down inside the walls, like the walls were made of delicious fruit flavoured gelatin. It turned out that the same controller that caused the knockback to fall down was reinforcing the wall code. So after some quick tweaking it works again, more or less.
S0 now, the AI system is working with the pieces playing nicely together. Still does some odd crap from time to time, but otherwise I'm okay with it. It works well enough to build on. So I did.
After some doing I've gotten the combat collision to work again. It's not perfect yet, and still needs the Blue dodge but it does work nonetheless. So I hopped up and picked a fight with the enemy I'd set and said, well, nothing, but in my head I said the title. It then ran up and beat the high hell from me. It's nice in a weird sadomasochist kind of way, but enemies can do something again, they can bring the pain.
Further, they bring the pain at all hours and all frames. Previously, the attack frames only ever went off at a very specific time for every attack, no matter what. Now I control when that is on a per attack basis. The combat is looser already. I can back hop to dodge an attack and the AI can keep up. I'm very happy with it.

-In not news, I'm in the middle of Mirror's Edge. I don't care, the cartoons are cool and no, they don't look like an eSurance commercial. Get over it. In spite of the fact that I'm trying to play the game a very specific way (running, like Lola, not shooting like in every other FPS) I'm enjoying myself, mostly. Basically, when the game works, it works. When I get to run, the game is working on every level. When it's not, it's a little painful. I mean, when I get killed the 12th time by some corporate RoboCop-esque private police I want to throw things really hard. So basically, it hasn't given me a reason to hate it to death, and the nuggets of candy are enough to keep me going for now.
What it does do really well is the flow. I work like a maniac to make sure the game has flow, that it is seamless. Edge was it in spades. Oddly, it's kind of like its own internal feedback system - if it doesn't feel right, you're probably not doing it right. It comes across as very easy, but it's actually really hard to make it look easy.
Right, what I do like is the fact that, so far I can get through the game without killing/maiming/breaking anybody. It's refreshing in a way. Although, I will admit to a short period of fury. I grabbed a shotgun from a guard, murdered him and all of his buddies before that internal feedback thing kicked in. Holding a shotty just didn't seem correct in the context at work here. So, off a building I went, up the load screen came and then I did it again leaving nothing but footprints. It was cool.

...I don't feel pain, won't you hit me again? I like a bit of black and blue to be in the rotation...